Before giving away a machine or returning a loaner, it's important to remove your personal information from it. That may be both harder and easier than you think. I'll show you where traditional suggestions fail, and what you need to do instead.

Connectivity is becoming an added perk in some housing situations. Make sure you know the risks and alternatives when someone else provides your internet connection.

When it comes to links on webpages and HTML email, what you see is not always where you go. Hovering over a link is an important technique to look before you leap.

Disaster planning includes thinking about your technology and online access.

You would think that for such an important concept as end-to-end encryption there's be some agreement on exactly what it means. Sadly, not so. There's the correct definition, and then there's the marketing definition. One protects you, the other not so much.

CHKDSK, short for Check Disk, is a utility that checks the integrity of the files and file structure of your hard disk. I'll walk you through it.

There are many ways accounts can be compromised. There are also many simple ways you can protect yourself.

Floppies come and floppies go, but C: is apparently forever.

It's common to want confirmation your machine hasn't been compromised in some way. We can get close, but we can't prove it.

Some people are afraid to leave their external backup drive connected. They're trading a small risk for a much, much larger one.